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266 posts categorized "Social doctrine"

Thursday, September 08, 2016

Fr. Fessio, the founder and editor of Ignatius Press, was recently interviewed by Sean Salai, S.J. for America magazine about DOCAT, the follow-up to the popular youth catechism YOUCAT. Focused on the social doctrine of the Church, DOCAT was officially released by Pope Francis at World Youth Day in July. Here are some of Fr. Fessio's remarks on the genesis and contents of DOCAT:

What inspired Pope Francis to publish a youth catechism on Catholic social teaching and how did you get involved?

Actually, if Pope Francis was inspired, it was post factum. Docat had already been planned, and the writing had begun, before his election to the papacy. However, it is certainly a happy providence that the Docat aligned so well with his interests and priorities.

My involvement in the Youcat and now the Docat has an odd pre-history. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and I have been friends since we lived together in the Schottenkolleg (at the time the diocesan seminary) in Regensburg in 1973-74 as students of then-Professor Ratzinger. In the 1990s he asked for my help in the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. After the publication of the Catechism he was making a presentation in his Archdiocese of Vienna and during the Q&A period a woman stood up and said, in so many words, “This is wonderful. But it’s for adults. What about the children? They need a catechism too.”

Cardinal Schönborn responded by agreeing with her, but saying it needed to be a catechism not only for but also with the participation of young people. The woman organized two summer youth programs to work on adapting the Catechism for young people. She was joined by Bernhard Meuser, a German editor and youth catechist. From this the Youcat was born.

How did Ignatius Press become English-language publisher of the Youcat and now the Docat?

When Bernhard contacted me to see if Ignatius Press would be interested in being the publisher of the worldwide English edition, I assumed it was because of Cardinal Schönborn. That was not the case.

I had been invited to give a talk in Torun, Poland, and while I was there I was interviewed by a journalist working for a German Catholic magazine called Vatikan. He asked me about the origins of Ignatius Press. I explained that during my theology studies in Europe I had not only made the acquaintance of theologians like de Lubac, von Balthasar, Bouyer and Ratzinger but also for the first time had begun drinking wine (in France) and beer (in Bavaria).

Upon my return to the United States, I had my first taste of American beer. I spat it out and said, “If this is going to be called beer, I need another name for what I drank in Bavaria.” (This was in the days before the microbrewery revolution.) Later, as I was giving a retreat and quoting de Lubac, Balthasar, et al., a sister asked me if there were any great American theologians. I told her the beer story and said that while there were some very good theologians in the United States (I mentioned Avery Dulles, of course), still, if we were going to call them theologians, we needed another name for the giants I had studied in Europe.

I concluded the interview by saying that Ignatius Press was founded in 1979 so that the writings of these theologians could be accessible to an English-speaking readership.

And:

How is the Docat a successor to the Youcat in spirit and content?

The spirit, the collaboration of young people, and the appealing language and graphics are just like the Youcat. But the Docat focuses on the church’s social teaching and expands the Youcat’s treatment of it.

Where did you get the acronym “Docat” and what does it stand for?

It’s from the Germans, whose popular culture includes a lot of borrowings from the United States. Youcat was a contraction for “Youth Catechism.” (Sounds much more appealing to young Germans—and everyone else—than Jugendkatechismus.) Docat is a back formation from Youcat: “Do” (as in moral and social obligations) and “Catechism.” ...

What is the message of this catechism?

Do good and avoid evil. With a little more detail and practical help, of course.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, patron of the Knights and Dames of Malta, and Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, walk in the 6th annual March for Life in Rome May 8, 2016. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

by Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

Speaking to reporters from Rome about his new book, the American prelate goes on record about Christians and Muslims (they don't worship the same God) and Cardinal Sarah (“I agree with him completely...").

In a wide-ranging international teleconference call on Monday with media members, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke spoke in detail about many timely topics, including the priority of standing up for life in addressing poverty and other social ills, the witness and message of Mother Teresa, essential differences between Christianity and Islam, and the recent controversy over remarks by Cardinal Robert Sarah about liturgical orientation. The occasion of the call was Cardinal Burke's recent book Hope For the World: To Unite All Things in Christ (Ignatius Press), an interview given to French author Guillaume d'Alançon in 2015, and translated by Michael J. Miller for Ignatius Press.

Since being named a bishop by Pope John Paul II in 1994, Cardinal Burke has become one of more well-known prelates in the English-speaking world, known for his willingness to address controversial topics forthrightly, despite often being criticized. Noted as a canon lawyer, Cardinal Burke was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and then called to Rome to become Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. During the two recent Synods on the Family, Cardinal Burke spoke out often about his concerns, telling CWR during the October 2014 gathering that he thought the Synod's mid-term report "lacks a solid foundation in the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium", a remark made a month after he was removed from his position as Prefect and named chaplain to the Order of Malta by Pope Francis.

Cardinal Burke, conversing from Rome, told reporters that his new book was motivated by a desire to reflect on his upbringing and how he discerned his vocation as priest, and also "to reflect as a pastor, as a bishop, on certain on certain critical issues of the day". As such, he noted, the book is a "kind of testimony of faith on my part", and the hope is that the book, in keeping with its title, will "give hope" to readers.

Asked about an apparent shifting of priorities among American bishops since the beginning of Francis' pontificate, Cardinal Burke pointed out that while the issues of abortion, poverty, immigration, and global warming all have "moral importance", the Church's tradition and philosophical reason both indicate that "the fundamental question has to be the question of human life itself, the respect for the inviolable dignity of human life and of its Creator, of its Source, and the union of a man and a woman in marriage, which according to God's plan is the place where new human life is welcomed and nurtured."

He expressed concern that the matter of human life and the issues of abortion, artificial insemination, contraception, and euthanasia be placed somehow on the same level as "questions regarding immigration and poverty." The first priority, he emphasized, must be given to proper respect for human life and for the family in order to have "the right orientations in addressing all of the other questions" and challenges faced by people in daily life. It makes no sense, he pointed out, to be concerned with immigration or poverty "if human life itself is not protected in society ... The first justice accorded to any human being is to respect life itself, which is received from God..." Cardinal Burke observed there are some who advocate an elimination of certain parts of the population in order to fight poverty, or who adhere to a "contraceptive mentality" in order to pursue a sort of "social engineering" harmful to society and to individuals.

The former Archbishop of St. Louis emphasized that bishops have a responsibility to proclaim the truth of Christ in love within the Church, following the example of Christ himself, knowing that the love that will "best serve society is the truth, a truth that respects God's plan for us from the moment of creation..." When he travels, the cardinal said, he finds that people want to hear "the truth of the faith" from priests, bishops, and cardinals—"they aren't interested in my personal opinions about things, which won't save their souls, and I am as aware of that as they are; they look to me to reflect very deeply on the truths of the Faith and their application on society today, and to speak to that truth with love and care for society." The fundamental mission of Catholics in the world is to be united to Christ and to "give witness to the truth", a witness that is "very much needed in our time".

Asked how it was that he, as a young seminarian in the Sixties, avoided falling into the "craziness" of that era, Cardinal Burke credited his parents and his upbringing. He acknowledged he was not unaffected by the "tumultuous" times, especially after going to Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, in 1968 to study philosophy. He credits the "stable and good" discipline, prayer life, and formation he experienced in minor seminary, which he entered at the age of fourteen. He lamented that so many seminarians, seminary professors, and priests at CUA abandoned their vocations and ministry during that time. But he "simply couldn't be convinced that this so-called 'new way', this 'new Church'" was a good and right path, as if what he had been taught growing up was now "wrong and needed to be abandoned". He expressed, however, "great sympathy" for many of those who lost their way, saying that it was a "very tumultuous time and we were young".

Reflecting on the upcoming canonization of Mother Teresa by Pope Francis on Sunday, September 4th, Cardinal Burke expressed his happiness that the famous nun will be named a saint, saying "she has been an inspiration to me from my years in the seminary when I first came to know her".

Monday, August 22, 2016

Pope Francis passes a sign in Spanish referencing his name, mercy and Argentina as he greets the crowd during his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican June 1. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Poverty, Politics, and the Church in Pope Francis’s Argentina | Samuel Gregg | Catholic World Report

Argentina is trying to break with 70 years of populism, corruption, and general economic decline. But in the age of the Argentine pope, what role will the Church play in this process?

Before Jorge Bergoglio’s election as the first Latin American pope in 2013, Argentina was famous for many things: tango, its magnificent pampas, the beautiful late-nineteenth century architecture that marks much of Buenos Aires, to name just a few. Unfortunately, other things also come to mind: rampant and persistent corruption, extreme political instability, and, above all, the fact that Argentina is the twentieth century’s textbook-case of largely self-inflicted economic decline. Consider that as late as 1940, Argentina was the economic equal of Australia and Canada. Since then it’s been generally downhill.

During a recent trip to Argentina, however, I was immediately struck by the optimism that marked Argentines themselves. This contrasted with the widespread gloom visibly characterizing the country that I’d noticed on previous visits. One reason for the difference is that Argentina elected a non-Perónist to the presidency in November 2015, thus terminating 13 years of rule by the late Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina. They belonged to the wave of Latin American leftist-populists who came to power from the late-1990s onwards and who brought political and economic disarray in their wake.

Since assuming office, Argentina’s new President, Mauricio Macri, has sought to take the country in very different directions. He ended Argentina’s backing of the Chávista regime that has all but destroyed Venezuela. Macri is also exposing deep-seated corruption, the most notorious case thus far being a former Kirchner government official caught hiding several million US dollars in a convent. This has been accompanied by an effort to detoxify public discourse of the demagogic rhetoric that’s long plagued Argentine politics. Economically, Macri has started, albeit cautiously, moving Argentina away from its closed, highly-statist economic arrangements. This has included abolishing currency and capital controls as well as eliminating some price-controls, particular export taxes, and specific subsidies.

Thus far, opinion polls suggest that a slim but wavering majority of Argentines support Macri’s reforms. As one Jesuit remarked to me, many Argentines view Macri as the nation’s last chance to reverse the trend towards permanent decline. Judging, however, from the anti-Macri posters and demonstrations throughout Buenos Aires, plenty of Argentines oppose the reforms. Perónist politicians, long accustomed to using public office to dispense favors to supporters, aren’t going quietly. Likewise, Argentina’s powerful trade unions have said they’ll resist changes to the country’s heavily-regulated labor markets which, like all such markets, effectively discourage businesses from hiring people.

Another question occupying many Argentines’ minds is the stance of another important institution in the country’s life. Is the Catholic Church going to help smooth the path away from populism? Or will it, in the name of defending the poor, encourage resistance to reform? In all such discussions, Pope Francis’s words and actions feature prominently.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

DOCAT, says Pope Francis in the Introduction, "it is like a user’s manual that helps us to change ourselves with the Gospel first, and then our closest surroundings, and finally the whole world."

DOCAT, the follow-up and companion volume to the popular YOUCAT (Youth Catechism), was officially released yesterday at World Youth Day 2016 in Kraków, Poland.

DOCAT (pronounced "do-cat") is a popular adaptation of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church that draws on Scripture, YOUCAT, the Catechism and the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching, and features a foreword by Pope Francis (see below). As part of the release, a DOCAT app has been made available to all World Youth Day participants. The app helps readers to start groups, participate in discussions, and do acts of justice as a present to the pope, who, in writing the foreword to DOCAT, shared his dream with youth on how to change the world.

DOCAT is written with help from church and business leaders, social activists and young people in a popular Q-and-A, YOUCAT style that guides young people in conscience formation and Catholic action on social and political issues. It shows Catholics how to apply Gospel values to poverty, imbalance of wealth, employment and unemployment, the use of natural resources and environmental concerns, terrorism, immigration and abortion, among other topics

DOCAT features inspirational and insightful quotes from Catholic leaders and saints, including St. Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Pope Francis and Pope Benedict; excerpts from Francis’ magisterial teaching; and important statements from his immediate predecessor regarding the four principles of Catholic social teaching: the dignity of the human person, the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity.

“DOCAT answers the question: ‘What should we do [as Catholics]?’; it is like a user’s manual that helps us change ourselves with the Gospel first, and then our closest surroundings, and finally the whole world,” says Pope Francis in the foreword of DOCAT. “For with the power of the Gospel, we can truly change the world.”

Mark Brumley, President of Ignatius Press, states in a recent interview with Fathers For Good that DOCAT "shows young people how to use Catholic social teaching — which is really the gospel lived in society in a consistent way — in their daily lives and in their life aspirations." He explains that the volume will help young people become what they are called to be: "enthusiastic, well-formed and well-informed disciples of Jesus, acting by the power of the Spirit."

Ignatius Press has also co-published, with the Augustine Institute, The DOCAT Study Guide, which is an aid for using the DOCAT in a classroom setting, at home, or in small groups.

An 8-page, full-color flyer offering details about DOCAT and the Study Guide is available in PDF format from the Ignatius Press website.

Below is the full Introduction to DOCAT, written by the Holy Father, Pope Francis:

Dear Young People!

My predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, put into your hands a Youth Catechism, YOUCAT. Today I would like to commend to you another book, DOCAT, which contains the social doctrine of the Church.

The English verb “to do” is part of the title. DOCAT answers the question: “What should we do?”; it is like a user’s manual that helps us to change ourselves with the Gospel first, and then our closest surroundings, and finally the whole world. For with the power of the Gospel, we can truly change the world.

Jesus says: “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did to me.” Many saints were shaken to the core by this passage from the Bible. On account of it, Saint Francis of Assisi changed his whole life. Mother Teresa converted because of this saying. And Charles de Foucauld acknowledges: “In all of the Gospel, there is no saying that had greater influence on me and changed my life more deeply than this: ‘Whatsoever you did for one of the least of my brethren, you did for me.’ When I reflect that these words come from the mouth of Jesus, the Eternal Word of God, and that it is the same mouth that says, ‘This is my Body, ... this is my Blood ...’, then I see that I am called to seek and to love Jesus above all in these little ones, in the least.”

Dear young friends! Only conversion of heart can make our world, which is full of terror and violence, more humane. And that means patience, justice, prudence, dialogue, integrity, solidarity with victims, the needy, and the poorest, limitless dedication, love even unto death for the sake of the other. When you have understood that quite deeply, then you can change the world as committed Christians. The world cannot continue down the path that it is taking now. If a Christian in these days looks away from the need of the poorest of the poor, then in reality he is not a Christian!

Can we not do more to make this revolution of love and justice a reality in many parts of this tormented planet? The social doctrine of the Church can help so many people! Under the experienced direction of Cardinals Christoph Schönborn and Reinhard Marx, a team set to work to bring the liberating message of Catholic social doctrine to the attention of the youth of the world. They collaborated with famous scholars and also with young people on this project. Young Catholic women and men from all over the world sent in their best photos. Other young people discussed the text, offered their questions and suggestions, and made sure that the text is readily comprehensible. Social doctrine calls that “participation”! The team itself applied an important principle of the social doctrine from the start. Thus DOCAT became a magnificent introduction to Christian action.

What we call Catholic social teaching today came about in the nineteenth century. With industrialization, a brutal form of capitalism arose: a sort of economy that destroyed human beings. Unscrupulous industrialists reduced the impoverished rural population to the point where they toiled in mines or in rusty factories for starvation wages. Children no longer saw the light of day. They were sent underground like slaves to pull coal carts. With great commitment, Christians offered aid to those in need, but they noticed that that was not enough. So they developed ideas for counteracting the injustice socially and politically as well. Actually the fundamental proclamation of Catholic social doctrine was and is the 1891 encyclical letter by Pope Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, “On Capital and Labor.” The Pope wrote clearly and unmistakably: “To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven.” With the full weight of her authority, the Church fought for the rights of the workers.

Because the needs of the time demanded it, Catholic social teaching was increasingly enriched and re ned over the years. Many people debated about community, justice, peace, and the common good. They found the principles of personhood, solidarity, and subsidiarity, which DOCAT, too, explains. But actually this social doctrine does not come from any particular pope or from any particular scholar. It comes from the heart of the Gospel. It comes from Jesus himself. Jesus is the social teaching of God.

“This economy kills”, I wrote in my apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, for today that economy of exclusion and disparity of incomes still exists. There are countries in which 40 or 50 percent of the young people are unemployed. In many societies, older people are marginalized because they seemingly have no “value” and are no longer “productive”. Great stretches of land are depopulated because the poor of the earth flee to the slums of the major cities in the hope of finding something left there on which to survive. The production methods of a globalized economy have destroyed the modest economic and agricultural structures of their native regions. By now, approximately 1 percent of the world’s population owns 40 percent of the entire wealth of the world, and 10 percent of the world’s population owns 85 percent of the wealth. On the other hand, just about 1 percent of this world “belongs” to half of the world’s population. About 1.4 billion human beings live on less than one euro [approximately $1.10] per day.

When I invite you all now really to get to know the social doctrine of the Church, I am dreaming not just about groups that sit under trees and discuss it. That is good! Do that! My dream is of something greater: I wish I had a million young Christians or, even better, a whole generation who are for their contemporaries “walking, talking social doctrine”. Nothing else will change the world but people who with Jesus devote themselves to it, who with him go to the margins and right into the middle of the dirt. Go into politics, too, and fight for justice and human dignity, especially for the poorest of the poor. All of you are the Church. Make sure, then, that this Church is transformed, that she is alive, because she allows herself to be challenged by the cries of the dispossessed, by the pleading of the destitute, and by those for whom nobody cares.

Become active yourselves, also. When many do that together, then there will be improvements in this world and people will sense that the Spirit of God is working through you. And maybe then you will be like torches that make the path to God brighter for these people.

And so I give you this magnificent little book, hoping that it might kindle a re in you. I pray every day for you. Pray for me, too!

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

The highly anticipated follow-up to YOUCAT helps young Catholics tackle tough questions about the social doctrine of the Church

SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2016 – YOUCAT, the hugely popular Youth Catechism, based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, has sold millions of copies worldwide. DOCAT, which is the follow-up to YOUCAT, is a popular adaptation of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church that draws on Scripture, YOUCAT, the Catechism and the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching, and features a foreword by Pope Francis, who will help launch the book worldwide today at World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland.

The DOCAT app also is available today for all World Youth Day participants. Through the app young people will be able to start groups, participate in discussions and commit on the spot to study DOCAT and do acts of justice as a present to the pope, who, in writing the foreword to DOCAT, shared his dream with youth on how to change the world.

DOCAT is written with help from church and business leaders, social activists and young people in a popular Q-and-A, YOUCAT style that guides young people in conscience formation and Catholic action on social and political issues. It shows Catholics how to apply Gospel values to poverty, imbalance of wealth, employment and unemployment, the use of natural resources and environmental concerns, terrorism, immigration and abortion, among other topics

DOCAT features inspirational and insightful quotes from Catholic leaders and saints, including St. Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Pope Francis and Pope Benedict; excerpts from Francis’ magisterial teaching; and important statements from his immediate predecessor regarding the four principles of Catholic social teaching: the dignity of the human person, the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity.

“DOCAT answers the question: ‘What should we do [as Catholics]?’; it is like a user’s manual that helps us change ourselves with the Gospel first, and then our closest surroundings, and finally the whole world,” says Pope Francis in the foreword of DOCAT. “For with the power of the Gospel, we can truly change the world.”

See an eight page flyer here for more detailed information and sample pages.

For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with a DOCAT spokesperson, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com) of Carmel Communications.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

The interior of St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois (Wikipedia)

Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

And what is real social justice? The Book of Revelation answers that important question.

In his most recent column, Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon, points out something that every Catholic should know:

The Church’s Code of Canon Law contains 1,752 laws covering everything from the structural organization of the Church as the people of God, the teaching of the Faith, the sacramental life of the Church, the administration of the material goods of the Church, and even penal and procedural law. But lest any of us (especially canon lawyers) forget the purpose of all of this body of law, the very last law (or “canon”) states that the “salvation of souls”, which must always be the supreme law of the Church, must be kept before our eyes.

The salvation of souls. How often do we hear this language in the Church today? Not very often, I am afraid. And yet that is the very mission of the Church!

Quite right. But how often do we hear that the essential point of Christianity is to help the poor, or to seek social justice (more on that in a moment), or implement better programs for healthcare, education, and what not? Quite often. But everything in and of the Church should be oriented toward the ultimate goal of bringing people—by the grace of God, of course—into saving communion with the Triune God. Archbishop Sample says:

Why am I emphasizing this point, you may ask? Because I sincerely think that we are in danger of losing our focus in fulfilling the mission that Christ has entrusted to all of us in the Church. Our ultimate mission is to bring as many people as possible into the one People of God, to incorporate them into the one Body of Christ, and be built up as the temple of God, animated by the Holy Spirit. The gift of eternal salvation is the greatest gift God has given to us, a gift that was purchased at a great price, the blood of his only begotten Son. ...

It seems our current environment cultivates the opposite view. Our culture seems to tell us that the way to life is easy and wide, and most people find it, while to find the road to destruction is narrow and hard, and really very few people end up there. I go by our blessed Lord’s words.

Part of the reason I think that we are in danger of losing the essential and primary message of salvation of souls is based on how I see many people defining what it means to be a good Catholic. Many people have reduced being a good and faithful Catholic to being nice, tolerant and doing good works. They think if we do service projects for the poor and needy, and don’t make any judgments about human behavior and sin, then we are fulfilling the Gospel mandate.

"While it is a good and even essential thing that a disciple of Jesus care for the poor and seek justice for the oppressed in this world," he adds, "there is so much more to the message of redemption in Jesus Christ. We must follow the Ten Commandments, avoid sin, and repent and seek forgiveness when we fail. Our eternal salvation depends on all these things, as Jesus himself taught. 'If you love me, you will keep my commandments.' (John 14:15)". As a certain document of the Second Vatican Council summarized matters:

Christ, having been lifted up from the earth has drawn all to Himself. Rising from the dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world that He might lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself and that He might make them partakers of His glorious life by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood. Therefore the promised restoration which we are awaiting has already begun in Christ, is carried forward in the mission of the Holy Spirit and through Him continues in the Church in which we learn the meaning of our terrestrial life through our faith, while we perform with hope in the future the work committed to us in this world by the Father, and thus work out our salvation. (LG, 48)

Then there is the matter of "social justice", which has often become a sort of mindless mantra of those looking to attach deeper meaning to whatever political agenda or ideological project they are pushing, selling, or supporting.

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

A family prays together before a meal at their Chicago home in this 2012 file photo. (CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)

Tradition: Its Necessity and Its Discontents | James Kalb | CWR

Man is social, cultural, and rational, and acts in accordance with (mostly implicit) principles and ideals. For that reason tradition is directed toward something higher than itself.

I noted last month that living well is difficult apart from a definite and well-developed tradition of life. Otherwise we simply won't know what we're doing, and we'll have to make up everything as we go along without any idea of ultimate results or significance, or of what we might be missing.

Such claims for the necessity of tradition make no sense to many people today.

One objection is that they are meaningless, since everything people do is part of a tradition. There is Catholic tradition, Mafia tradition, Buddhist tradition, Bolshevik tradition, anarchist tradition, and so on. So praising tradition tells us nothing about what anyone should do.

Another is that it's the genius of tradition to develop, so a break in tradition can better be seen as a variation or new development. If people are starting to do something, it's part of their tradition as it now exists. And besides, traditions are complex, as complex as the situations they deal with. In a Catholic society there are likely to be traditions of devotion, orthodoxy, and rigor, but also of laxness, skepticism, heresy, atheism, and criminality. Much the same applies to other communities, so why pick out some tendencies within a community's overall tradition of life and call them the tradition of the community to the exclusion of all others? Don't all the parts come together to make up the whole?

A different sort of objection is based on liberal individualism. I have my life, and I'm responsible for it, so why should I give special preference to what some restricted group of people did in the past? Why wouldn't it be better to choose freely from all the possibilities offered by human thought and experience, or decide on some new departure if that seems better? That's what founders of traditions do, and traditionalists don't complain about them, so why shouldn't I have the same privilege?

A related objection has to do with pluralism. In modern society there are a variety of traditions present, and it would be unfair, discriminatory, and divisive to deny any of them equal status. That's why we're told we need to celebrate diversity and be careful to include equally those who are different. But if we do that each tradition will be deprived of authority, even informal authority, in anything that matters to other people. Otherwise, some people will be marginalized. So traditions can't have authority that matters socially, which means they can't exist as traditions but only as collections of optional private opinions and practices.

And then there's the practical problem of how people live today. Life has changed, so why should old habits and attitudes still make sense?

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

Making Catholic hospitals and schools widely available again in a society in desperate need of both is how Catholics can once again become a cultural force.

Rod Dreher has suggested something he calls “The Benedict Option” as a response to the decline in religious faith and practice — and in the face of the increasing hostility toward them — in contemporary culture. The question he believes Christians must ask themselves in our current setting is, “What must the church do in order to live and witness faithfully as a minority in a culture in which we were once the majority?”

“As we try to determine which forms of community, which institutions and which ways of life can answer that question,” writes Dreher, “we should draw on the wisdom of St. Benedict and his Rule. We should innovate ways to adapt it to forms of non-monastic living in the world.” Among the Benedictine principles he believes should help inform this recovery-of-the-old-in-the-new way of life he is suggesting would be things like order, prayer and work, community, stability, balance, and hospitality.

Dreher has insisted repeatedly that he is not advocating a strategy of “retreat” or “disengagement” with the world. Rather, the term “Benedict Option” symbolizes what he describes as “a historically-conscious, antimodernist return to roots, an undertaking that occurs with the awareness that Christians have to cultivate a sense of separation, of living as ... ‘resident aliens’ in a ‘Christian colony,’ in order to be faithful to our calling.”

C. S. Lewis once described something similar in Mere Christianity when he called upon Christians to realize that they live in “Enemy-occupied territory.” “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” The “Enemy,” however, as Lewis makes clear by capitalizing the title, is on his view the Devil, not primarily the culture-at-large, nor (God help us) our non-Christian neighbors.

The story of salvation history is the story of a fallen people in a fallen world to whom a Savior has come to redeem both them and through them all of creation. We are called to be instruments of God’s grace and a leaven in society, not enemies of our neighbors and instruments of their condemnation.

The Question and a Suggestion

A question that has bedeviled Christians from the very beginning is how to be in the world but not of it. So too, how to distinguish “the world” as the very good thing God created for us from “the world” that we have “subjected to vanity” and in whose pattern St. Paul warns us we are not to be conformed? How can Christians serve as a leaven in society without merely becoming one with it — without becoming salt that has lost its flavor, worth nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot?

Dreher’s answer is that we must pay greater attention to forming Christians prepared to live out Christianity in this alien cultural territory, and doing that requires embedding them within communities and institutions dedicated to that sort of formation. “The Benedict Option,” he says, “is about forming communities that teach us and help us to live in such a way that our entire lives are witnesses to the transforming power of the Gospel.”

I have no problem with any of this — in fact I’m rather a fan, in much the same way I’ve always been a fan of monasticism ever since I discovered the great Catholic tradition in college. So I have no criticisms to offer — although I would sound a warning gleaned from the history of monasticism about “intentional communities,” including (perhaps especially) “religious” ones that, while preserving their own autonomy, do not remain firmly tethered to the Church and the authority of the successors of the apostles, the bishops. The history of monasticism suggests that, without an anchor to something firm, most of these institutions lose their way rather quickly. It is not without reason that there is an old historian’s dictum that says: “The history of monasticism is the history of the reform of monasticism.” The monastic life looks pleasant enough, and it was never meant to be overly burdensome, like the life of the anchorites in the desert. But as professor of mine once remarked about the Benedictine Rule: “No, it’s not hard — unless you actually do it.”

So I have no criticisms — really — but I do have a suggestion, one gleaned from the history of monasticism.

If those proposing “the Benedict Option” are not advocating a “retreat” or “disengagement from” the culture, as I take them at their word they are not, then perhaps they might take another bit of guidance from medieval Benedictine practice about how as an institution (and not merely as individuals) a group can serve as a powerful leaven in society.

If we look back at history, two things that characterized monasteries changed European society perhaps more than any others: monasteries were centers of learning and centers of hospitality.

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Our governing institutions and the public at large have staked their authority and actions on the rejection of natural law in favor of preference satisfaction. So what can be done?

Catholics talk about natural law, but what’s it all about?

Basically, it’s a system of principles that guides human life in accordance with our nature and our good, insofar as those can be known by natural reason. It thereby promotes life the way it evidently ought to be, based on what we are and how the world is, from the standpoint of an intelligent, thoughtful, and well-intentioned person.

It’s much the same, at least in basic concept, as what classical Western thinkers called life in accordance with nature and reason, and the classical Chinese called the Tao (that is, the "Way"). We might think of it as a system that aims at moral and social health and well-being—which, like physical health, can at least in principle be largely understood apart from revelation.

For that reason, natural law has seemed to many Catholic thinkers the obvious basis for a society that would be pluralistic but nonetheless just, humane, and open to the specific contributions of Christianity.

There’s something to that view. Grace completes rather than replaces nature, so natural law includes basic principles of Christian morality. Also, political life depends on discussion and willing cooperation based on common beliefs. It would be best if those beliefs reflected the whole truth about man and the world—and politics were therefore Catholic—but people who run things today don’t accept that and don’t seem likely to do so any time soon. Even so, it might be possible for a governing consensus to form around the principles or at least concept of natural law. The idea of government in accordance with man’s nature and natural good could then give discussion a reference point and some degree of coherence even though disagreements over important issues would remain.

A problem with the proposal is the practical importance of the questions on which people routinely disagree in the absence of a settled public orthodoxy. In antiquity Stoics and Confucians thought man social and the world morally ordered, so they emphasized social duties. Epicureans and Taoists saw man as less social, and rejected cosmic purpose, so they emphasized private well-being rather than obligations to others. And the Chinese Legalists and sophists like Thrasymachus made force the ultimate reality in human affairs, so they favored outright tyranny.

In modern times views on man and his place in the world have differed no less dramatically, as demonstrated by culture wars in the United States, current events in the Middle East, and the history of the last century in general. So it seems difficult to make something as abstract as the general concept of natural law the basis of a political order. People need a more definite focus for their thoughts and actions.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (from left) greet South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem at Washington National Airport in May 1957. (Wikipedia/Department of Defense)

by K. V. Turley | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

Geoffrey Shaw's The Lost Mandate of Heaven recounts how Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, was taken down and murdered by a military coup sponsored by the U.S. government

Early on November 2, 1963, the then President of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother, Nhu, had just heard Holy Mass at a church in a suburb of Saigon. They had fled there the previous evening having received word of a military coup. After Mass, the brothers remained for some time, deep in silent prayer. For Diem, there was nothing unusual in this. He had been a daily communicant for most of his life, and this early morning routine of Mass and private prayer had become an integral part of his life and indeed of his presidency. That morning, however, was to be different.

Soon, there came the sound of American Jeeps and an armored personnel carrier driven by Vietnamese soldiers no longer loyal to the legitimate head of state. They found their president, alongside his brother, still knelt in prayer before an image of Our Lady. Both men were seized and bundled into the back of the personnel carrier. There, awaiting them, was a soldier with bayonet drawn, who proceeded to cut out Diem’s gallbladder. Once this torture had been completed, both brothers were summarily shot.

Why did the plotting general want Diem and his brother Nhu, a trusted advisor and confidante, dead? One of the generals said later: “They had to be killed. Diem could not be allowed to live because he was too much respected among simple gullible people in the countryside, especially [by] the Catholics and the refugees [from North Vietnam]”. Just over ten years later, the penultimate President of South Vietnam, Tran Van Huong, was to remark as his country’s slid inexorably towards capitulation to the Viet-Cong: “The generals knew very well that having no talent, no moral virtues, no political support whatsoever, they could not prevent a spectacular comeback of [Diem]” if he had been left alive.

A new book from Ignatius Press, The Lost Mandate Of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam by Geoffrey Shaw, examines these events, placing the shocking murder of the two Ngo Dinh brothers in its historical context. Also on display is the part American foreign policy played in this. Furthermore, and more disturbing still, the book points the finger of blame for complicity in these murders not at some shadowy group working outside the bounds of legitimate political control, but at the US President, and fellow Catholic, John F. Kennedy.

From Hanoi in the north, the Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, reportedly said on hearing of the assassination: “I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.” What had just taken place was far more than short-sighted stupidity, however, as what had been sanctioned in the murders unleashed upon Vietnam and her neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos (and, indeed, America herself) a bloody nightmare that haunts to this day.

The Lost Mandate of Heaven is a formidable piece of scholarship. Mr Shaw has left no stone unturned in putting together the pieces of the jigsaw of the last days and final betrayal of Diem by the Vietnamese Generals and their American collaborators. If one wishes to retain a benign view of American foreign policy then it’s best not to read further. If, however, one is not surprised by the political machinations that lead to a just man dying – with its echoes of the call for one man’s death to benefit a whole nation – then this account will only confirm one’s belief in the nature of this fallen world in which global and national politics are but the reflections, for better or worse, of what is in men’s hearts.

Born on January 3, 1901, Diem was raised a Catholic. He came from a family and background that combined Christian faith and Catholic social teaching with the Confucian ideals of serving the common good. It was to prove a formidable combination in his political career.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

While many say we are witnessing a new and emerging "definition of family", we are actually seeing stark evidence of chaos and collapse

A few houses down the block from mine there’s a house with two women in their late 30s or early 40s and two boys ages 12 or 13 living in it. Just about the only man I’ve ever seen there is the pizza delivery guy, and he doesn’t get beyond the front door.

I suppose each of the women is mother of one of the boys. Now and then I think about those kids and ask myself a question: No doubt they’re members of a family—but what family?

When one of them thinks about his family, does he think about his mother and himself? About himself and his mother and his invisible father? About the four people living in that house down the street—himself, the other boy, the two women? And whatever the answer may be now, how will he think of family ten years from now? How will he picture the family he may have started by then or at least begun thinking about?

If that boy is confused, he’s not the only one. What does family mean to Americans today? As a country, as a society, isn’t America suffering from massive confusion about that?

Looking for something that might shed light on these matters, I came across a statement that President Jimmy Carter issued—January 30, 1978 was the date—formally announcing the White House Conference on Families scheduled later that year. That now forgotten White House Conference talk fest was a controversial minor landmark in the evolution of family policy in the United States. Carter’s statement is very short, but it makes three important points appropriate to the occasion.

First: “Families are both the foundation of American society and its most important institution.”

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Tom Hanks stars in a scene from the movie "Bridge of Spies." The Catholic News Service classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13. (CNS photo/DreamWorks)

"Bridge of Spies" and the Path to Virtue | Bishop Robert Barron | The Dispatch at CWR

In recent years, Steven Spielberg has emerged as a latter-day Frank Capra, a celebrator of core values and the courage required to defend them

My great mentor Msgr. Robert Sokolowski told a class of eager philosophy students many years ago that we should read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics every year of our lives. As we grew older, he explained, new dimensions of the book would continually present themselves.

I can't say that I've followed Sokolowski's advice perfectly, but I have indeed returned often to Aristotle's great text for inspiration and clarification. One of the Philosopher's principal insights is that the best way to understand virtue is not through abstract study but rather by watching the virtuous man in action. Learning the moral life is, for Aristotle, something like acquiring artistic skill through apprenticeship or like becoming an actor through understudying to an established thespian. Finding a master and striving to imitate him is the key. It seems only fitting, by the way, that I learned the craft of philosophizing largely by watching Sokolowski in action.

I thought of all of this as I watched Steven Spielberg's latest film Bridge of Spies. Especially in recent years, Spielberg has emerged as a latter-day Frank Capra, a celebrator of core values and the courage required to defend them. In this most recent movie, Tom Hanks (the Jimmy Stewart of our time) plays James B. Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer who is pressed into service to provide a defense for Rudolf Abel, a man very credibly accused of spying for the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Donovan does this, not because he's convinced Abel is innocent, but because he believes in the moral principal that, in a free society, everyone deserves a fair trial. In so doing, he exemplifies the most fundamental of the classical virtues, namely, justice. Plato famously defined justice as "rendering to each his due," and Thomas Aquinas refined that definition as "a constant will to render to another his right." To state it as simply as possible, it is doing the upright thing.

So Donovan defends Abel because Abel is owed this privilege; to give him legal counsel is due to him.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Although the post-modern, secular state may write codes, exact penalties, and levy punishments, these legal entities are ultimately responsible before a higher court

When a moral norm that had been honored in Christendom for two millennia came tumbling down, to my knowledge only one person in any official position, a county court clerk in Ashland, Kentucky, protested its enforcement to the extent of risking imprisonment.

When the decision of the Supreme Court was questioned, the answer was, “It’s the law of the land.” This is an answer that would have been given in Rome, Constantinople, Wessex, Georgian England, and in the United States, but it is also an answer that would have been given in the Third Reich and that is now given in China, Russia, Cuba, and various other tin-pot tyrannies, which suggests that to the question at hand “It’s the law” is an answer so ambiguous as to be morally useless.

The right answer to the question why must any law be obeyed is that it must be obeyed because it is just. There have been other attempts to stake political positions on the grounds that positive law, court decisions, or custom, being only enactments of courts or legislatures, were in fact unjust. The abolition movement, the suffragettes, and the anti-war protests all in some way represented or claimed to represent an appeal against positive law to a (usually poorly defined) higher law.

Whether or to what degree those who make such appeals know it or not, they are invoking one of the most ancient principles known to jurisprudence, at least until day before yesterday: the principle that positive law should, but sometimes may not, reflect or represent natural law. Now this is not a principle that can rightly be used to justify every complaint or grievance, or to justify civil disobedience—there is always a practical assumption in favor of authority—but nonetheless the appeal to natural law is the principle that underlay the vast medieval texture of claims to legitimacy or lawfulness. The same appeal to the natural law was implicit in Magna Carta and the charges brought by the Declaration of Independence against George III.

The classic structure of law upon which the lawfulness of positive law rests, while assumed by Cicero, Saint Paul (it underpins Romans 2:14-16), and by Saint Augustine, was stated comprehensively in St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica, Ia-IIae.

Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Simplicity, detachment, nature, and the Creator themes of new book “Life from Our Land”

Marcus Grodi, EWTN TV host of the popular show The Journey Home, never imagined that he would move from the city to twenty-five acres of Ohio farmland. Yet one day, Marcus and his wife found themselves to be the proud owners of a large piece of rural property, inherited from a relative, and decided to make the drastic move.

In his new book, Life from Our Land, Grodi discusses what he and his family discovered, mostly by surprise, after moving to the country. This move involved a radical shift in priorities for all of them, but mostly it helped them to discover some critical truths about humanity’s relationship to nature and to nature’s Creator that apply regardless of where a person lives. He offers wonderful, often humorous, reflections on his going-back-to-the-land experience as a metaphor for drawing closer to God.

Grodi points out that in today’s consumerist culture, voices from every direction beckon us, even push us, toward better and faster technology, with the promise of more wealth, more pleasure, and, consequently, more happiness.

But have we become so bewitched by the siren song of material progress that we’ve lost the ability not just to achieve, but to discern what true happiness is? What criteria do we use to plan for the future, for retirement? Has our culture’s enticement to always look for an easier, labor saving means to do everything left us a flabby, flaccid culture? At the end of our earthly lives, how will we measure our fruitfulness? These are some of the questions that Marcus Grodi ponders, and answers, in Life from Our Land. This unique book includes many photos of the land and nature that complement the reflections in the book.Paul Thigpen, author of the Manual for Spiritual Warfare, says, “If we ponder carefully the insights in this book, we can learn how to grow in detachment, simplicity, holiness, and humility.”

“This is not an idealized ‘back-to-the-land’ manual. Rather it is about simplifying our lives and rooting ourselves in the good soil of the world even as we reach upward to heaven—the ultimate Real,” says Michael D. O'Brien, author of Father Elijah.

Joseph Pearce, author of Catholic Literary Giants, advises, “Read this book and you will receive the riches Mammon cannot provide and reap the harvest of hope and wisdom.”

“This book is a hymn of gratitude for the wonder that is creation, which manifests the deep purpose of things,” says Dr. Timothy O’Donnell, President of Christendom College.

John Cuddeback, Ph.D., author of True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness, explains, “Charming anecdotes, a good dose of common sense, and a wealth of scriptural references grace a book that will inspire and guide us to a more human and more Christian way of life.”

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of The Romance of Religion claims, “Marcus Grodi is turning out to be the Catholic Thoreau of our day. He calls all of us to reexamine our fast-paced, high-tech lives to find a simpler, purer way.”

“Grodi not only offers a critique of our materialist American society, but what is rarer, suggests some practical steps by way of solutions,” says Thomas Storck, author of The Catholic Milieu.About the Author:Marcus Grodi, a native of Ohio, studied polymer science at Case Western Reserve University and worked as an engineer before receiving his Master of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. After many years in ministry, he founded the Coming Home Network International. He hosts The Journey Home television series on EWTN.

Marcus Grodi, the author of Life from Our Land, is available for interviews about this book.

To request a review copy or an interview with Marcus Grodi, please contact: Rose Trabbic, Publicist, Ignatius Press at (239) 867-4180 or rose@ignatius.com

Some Labor Day observations about the recent contract negotiations between the San Francisco Archdiocese and its unionized Catholic high school teachers

What is the responsibility of Catholic school teachers with regard to the spoken and lived representation of Catholic moral values? Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritateis a helpful point of departure for some Labor Day observations about the recent contract negotiations between the San Francisco Archdiocese and its unionized Catholic high school teachers. Let me preface this commentary by underscoring my own desire for Christian unity and the need for charity and truth to achieve it. Institutional structures—e.g., employee handbooks and collective bargaining agreements—require responsible institutional participants. This is the case in churches, businesses, government entities, unions, schools and, in a less formal case, families.

Caritas in Veritate means “charity in truth”; in effect, to believe that “God is Eternal Love” and “Absolute Truth” means that charity and truth are inexorably linked. Pope Benedict XVI teaches that we discover truth within the foundational awareness of charity, and charity can authentically occur only within the presence of truth. The Church must necessarily speak on social questions such as the right to life, the family, marriage, racism, immigration, and work life as part of its mission, and therefore the teaching of Catholic morality at its schools and other institutions will always address the lives of Catholics and all men and women of good will.

How do Catholics fully become the people God calls them to be? How do they help others to achieve that same end? Caritas in Veritate begins by stating, “Each person finds his good by adherence to God’s plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:22)”. Catholics are taught that each person has a call and, while others may not believe in God, we recognize by our common humanity that every person has human dignity and a purpose in his or her life.

Truth and charity

In the first few paragraphs of Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI points out that unfortunately, in this era, “charity” has often lost its meaning because it is detached from God’s love, and truth has become relative for many men and women. Modernists—the intellectual pace setters for culture—mistakenly believe that love is what people decide it is based on their autonomous feelings, and that the only “truth” is one’s own ego and desires, or, in other words, the absence of objective truth.

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Like the rest of liberal modernity, the current understanding of identity won’t last because it’s ultimately irrational and self-defeating

The age of Jenner, Obergefell, and #BlackLivesMatter puts issues of identity at the center of public life. As Catholics and citizens we need to understand what that means.

Personal identity orients us in the world. As such, it has both individual and social functions. It enables us to order our lives by telling us what we are and how we fit into the world. And it greatly eases social functioning by telling people how they connect to institutions and what they owe them.

For a Catholic his identity includes Catholicism—his membership in the Church and orientation toward God and the world. It also includes his sex, state in life as married, ordained, or vowed, and basic family connections such as parentage. We can’t rightly abandon such things, they are fundamental to who we are, and they determine our most basic relationships and duties, thereby supporting the Church and the natural family as fundamental social institutions.

Other aspects of identity are less basic and more dependent on social conditions. More distant family relationships and the cultural networks into which we are born, for example, are less important today than in the past. Instead of relying on them for learning how to live and dealing with the practical problems of life, people rely on markets, bureaucracies, formal education, and mass culture. If Pete Muldoon goes to Harvard, people identify him more as a Harvard man and someone of his generation than as Irish and a Muldoon. They think those things account for more of his social position and how he acts.

Many people have come to view traditional dimensions of identity as irrational and oppressive and want their suppression: to give weight to family is seen as snobbish, and to do so with inherited cultural community is thought racist and therefore downright evil. That view contrasts with a more traditional Catholic view that sees traditional connections as valuable within limits.

The reason for wanting to suppress such things is that promoting some elements of identity means suppressing others.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Abp. Blase Joseph Cupich (left) was installed as head of the Archdiocese of Chicago on Nov. 18, 2014 (CNS); Joseph Cardinal Bernardin (right) was Archbishop of Chicago from 1982 until his death in 1996 (Wikipedia).

The Consistent—and Not So Seamless—Ethic of Life | Dr. Samuel Gregg | CWR

Archbishop Blaise Cupich's appeal to Cardinal Bernardin's "seamless garment" approach to ethics is flawed on several counts, including a failure to acknowledge the primacy of the laity in pursuing good public policy

In an August 3rd Chicago Tribune article, Archbishop Blaise Cupich of Chicago suggested that the widespread outrage ignited by the revelations that Planned Parenthood was selling body-parts extracted from aborted children represented an opportunity for Americans

to reaffirm our commitment as a nation to a consistent ethic of life. While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive, we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

Archbishop Cupich was quite right to underscore the classical Christian insight that good can be drawn out from evil, just as the Fall leads to Redemption. Much attention, however, was directed to the Archbishop’s use of the expression “a consistent ethic of life”: a phrase which has been used by members of the American Catholic episcopate as far back as a 1971 speech delivered by then-Archbishop Humberto Medeiros of Boston.

The term itself was brought to prominence by another Chicago archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. In approximately 15 addresses delivered between 1983 and 1986, Bernardin called for the development of such an ethic and outlined how it might inform the way in which Catholics—lay and clerical—approached public policy issues.

Right from the beginning, forceful criticisms were made of the consistent ethic position (often described as the “seamless garment”). One was that it would inadvertently help provide “cover” for Catholic politicians who supported legalized abortion. Cardinal Bernardin himself lamented in a 1988 National Catholic Register interview that

I know that some people on the left, if I may use that term, have used the consistent ethic to give the impression that the abortion issue is not all that important any more, that you should be against abortion in a general way but that there are more important issues, so don’t hold anyone’s feet to the fire just on abortion. That is a misuse of the consistent ethic, and I deplore it.

Ten years later, the United States Catholic Conference’s document Living the Gospel of Life also criticized those who had used the consistent ethic to relativize the killing of unborn human beings by making it just one of a laundry list of concerns.

In a way, however, the political fallout from the consistent ethic distracted attention from significant ambiguities that characterized important aspects of the seamless garment’s theological and philosophical apparatus. In light of what seem to be efforts to revive this approach as a way for Catholics and, more particularly, Catholic bishops to engage in public policy debates, it’s worth revisiting these problems.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

“The aesthetic of the Pope’s reflections (on the tension between man and nature, the tendency of man to use technology to dominate others and the environment, and the ideal of an integral ecology) remind me of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. I think Miyazaki explores similar themes, although from a very different perspective.”

That’s what my wife Aletheia posted online after starting to read Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’. But how much in common do the views of a Japanese animator and an Argentinian pontiff really have? Let’s take a look.

Who is Hayao Miyazaki?

Japanese animation was regarded in the West for many years as exemplifying cheapness. To cut costs, American animation studios would outsource to Japan. A number of Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s and 1980s were animated in this way, with fairly uninspiring storylines and pedestrian animation. One of the people who would help change all this was a young animator named Hayao Miyazaki. Cutting his teeth working on different series, he quickly rose to director status. Early work included the first half-dozen episodes of Sherlock Hound, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories recast with animals, featuring glimpses of what would become Miyazaki’s visual hallmark: inventive depictions of fantastic machinery set against a bucolic environment.

When Hayao Miyazaki was a small child his father ran a factory making parts for war planes, including rudders for the famed Mitsubishi Zero. The contrast between the beauty of flight and the destructive power of such weaponry seems to have made a large impact on Miyazaki’s perception of the world. A recurring theme in his animated films is how men and women are easily seduced into thinking they can control nature via technology. In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, people try to use a genetically modified giant to eradicate a threat. InPrincess Mononoke, the industrialist Lady Eboshi attempts to kill a forest spirit who threatens her ironworks. In both cases powers beyond man’s control are unleashed.

Another theme is how selfish choices have an impact beyond the individual, and how finding an adult path in life cannot come through acts of rebellion.

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

In order to maximize control, the social justice/social services state must minimize man. What can be done?

Should Catholics today work, as a matter of conscience, toward ever broader bureaucratic responsibility for human well-being in general?

That result seems to follow from current ways of thinking. “Love thy neighbor” implies an ethic of mutual assistance. The democratic view that we act through government, together with the industrial approach to getting things done reliably, which is now thought simply rational, seem to imply the social services state as a necessary consequence.

The point is confirmed by the language of rights that the Church has now adopted: everyone has a right to food, shelter, medical care, employment, and many other things. “Rights” normally mean enforceable individual entitlements. If other institutions don’t deliver, government should step in and make sure what’s needed gets done; otherwise, it’ll be denying basic human rights. So welfare rights recognized by the Church seem to obligate government to guarantee everyone a materially decent standard of living regardless of circumstances.

And then there is the notion of solidarity, which makes everyone our neighbor, and seems to call for an arrangement through which each looks after all. It is also confirmed by considerations of justice and mercy. Some people have practical problems, with no one to help them, through no fault of their own. Others are at fault, but the consequences seem disproportionate, especially when compared with other people who do worse without similar problems. And even when the faults seem great, who knows what really happened or what we would have done in their place?

Above all, Christ emphasized forgiveness and mercy, and tells us not to judge. So it seems the social order should be set up to minimize the results of bad luck and even bad conduct in all cases. Given current ways of thinking and doing things, that means that an ever more comprehensive and global welfare state is part of any minimally adequate response to human misfortune and failure.

Nor should Christians be content with the minimum. Love and mercy know no limits. So in the name of ever greater solidarity, it seems that government should work to overcome every human distinction people may feel as a disadvantage. To avoid invidious distinctions between welfare dependency and self-support, for example, it seems that government should, as a matter of equal citizenship, provide as many basic goods and services as possible gratis to all.

On such a view the Christian social ideal turns out to be a sort of politically correct egalitarian collectivism, a society in which everyone equally supports everyone and no invidious distinctions are permissible or even possible.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Ignatius Press president Mark Brumley is joined by Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder of Ignatius Press, editor Vivian Dudro, and John Herreid for a discussion of the new encyclical Laudato Si'. Watch the video below.